Spirit Rock Meditation Center: dharma talks and meditation instruction

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Talk/meditation includes references to the song "Soldier of Love" by Sade. It is recommended that you listen to this song to receive the most out of these teachings.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Releasing the heart from resentment and anger while honoring accountability and emotional boundaries.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Setting up and devoting ourselves to a steady mettā (loving kindness) meditation practice, we start where it is easiest and where we can keep it simple. With a basis of blending a sense of ease and relaxation with patient steady attentiveness, we invite mettā to arise in our hearts supported internally by images and phrases. Though it takes some experimenting to find balance with these tools, the repetition of mettā phrases keeps directing our attention to the purpose of mettā practice. These phrases are so very helpful when we live into more complex or challenging situations.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) As we practice mettā meditation we will have waves where the practice feels easy, intuitive and validating; and we will all have waves where we struggle. There are five very common states which visit us in meditation practice called the "five hindrances". These are commonly named in English as craving, aversion, dullness, restlessness, and doubt. For steady mettā practice our first response to these challenges is to practice more carefully with patience determination. The second response is to offer ourselves kindness and compassion during challenging times. For mettā meditation and for the other three brahmaviharas, our third response to challenging times is to turn wakefully towards the qualities of the challenge and see them as only temporary conditions. We can greatly reduce the experience of suffering in the hindrances when we have mindful experience of them.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) There are so many ways to practice formal mettā (loving kindness) meditation, and they all benefit from a relaxed mind and body. The proximal cause for samadhi (concentration) to arise is from a deepening sense of happiness, calm, and contentment. Many practitioners are drawn to use will and force to concentrate their attention, and this leads to agitation, frustration, and fatigue. With mettā breathing and body awareness we can cultivate the ease so useful for our hindrances to subside.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) On the Fourth of July, we look at the relationship between the freedoms opened up by the dharma, the teachings and practices of awakening, and by the promise and actuality of democracy, at this time of peril for democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere. Can we imagine a spiritually-grounded democracy? To respond to this question, we examine the vision of democracy, remembering both some of the words of the founders and the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "America is essentially a dream, a dream as yet unfulfilled. It is a dream of a land where people of all races, all nationalities and all creeds can live together as brothers and sisters." We also explore the vision of dharma and awakening, including the Buddha's creation of a community separate from the prevailing caste system of his time. Yet we also need to look at the many "shadows" of both democracy and dharma, which obscure the vision and prevent its full realization. We end by pointing to a number of ways to renew, develop, and practice our visions of "spiritual democracy" in the different parts of our lives.